The Einsatzgrüppen :

Psychology of the Perpetrator

Mother and child victims at mass shooting near Ivangorod, Ukraine

Overview

• Einsatzgrüppen(German: “task

forces”) were mobile killing

squads, or death squads, under

administration of the German SS

• Victims: racial and political

enemies of the state

– Jews

– Roma

– Soviet State officials [see slide 6]

– Communist Party members

– The handicapped

• The Einsatzgrüppen’s systematic

execution of Jews in Eastern

Europe is believed to be the first

step of the Final SolutionThe shooting of a young Jewish man in Slarow,

Soviet Union, July 4, 1941. His family lies dead

in front of him.

Areas of OperationThe Einsatzgrüppen followed the German army as it advanced into Soviet satellite

states (Baltic Area) and the Soviet Union.

Methods• Einsatzgrüppen separated into four units

– Einsatzgruppe A: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, to St.Petersburg

– Einsatzgruppe B: from Warsaw to Smolensk and Minsk

– Einsatzgruppe C: western Ukraine• Responsible for infamous September 1941

massacre: BabiYar

– Einsatzgruppe D: Southern Ukraine and Crimea

• Swept into towns, initiated flood of anti-Semitic propaganda that rallied local civilians, who often helped in the massacres [see Witness Testimony, slide 5]

• Rounded up their victims; vast majority were Jews, who were forced to undress [see Film Footage, slide 7], hand over valuables, and march to their deaths

• No man, woman, or child was spared in the mass shootings

• Extremely few survivors; those who survived the shot were almost always buried alive by bodies and dirt

“The Last Jew in Vinnitsa” (Ukraine, 1942)

Witness Testimony

Stanislav M. from Grimaïliv, Ukraine

Testimony

German poster for 1937

anti-Bolshevism

exhibition

(note the irony)

Film Footage

Rare footage of a mobile killing unit during a massacre

in Liepaja, Latvia

Footage

Behind the Masks of Killers

• Some of the Einsatzgrüppen were sadistic, many were ruthless and brutal, but they were ordinary Germans, “ordinary men”

• Milgram experiment demonstrates how far people will go to follow orders

• Milgram experiment was recreated in March 2010 on controversial French game show, Le Jeu de la Mort (The Game of Death)– Participants told they are contestants on game show and

must deliver near-fatal electric shocks to other contestants for answering questions incorrectly

– No actual shocks are given—an actor plays rival participant; screams and cries in pain

– Over 80% of contestants delivered “shocks” of up to 380 V (even though there was no prize for winning)

Le Jeu de la Mort

Mostly in French; watch for the clip from the original

Milgram experiments.

Le Jeu de la Mort

Fundamental Responsibility: Obey

• Absolute obedience, hierarchical structure, but obsfucation of authority and responsibility

• All roads of responsibility lead to the Führer

• Höss, Auschwitz commandant: “We were all so trained to obey orders without thinking that the thought of disobeying an order would simply never have occurred to anybody and somebody else would have done just as well if I hadn’t… I never really gave much thought to whether it was wrong. It just seemed a necessity” (Rhodes 159).

• Note his feeling of being replaceable, dispensable– Each perpetrator was one among thousands

• The killings were “mass shootings reduced to ordinary bureaucratic process within the framework of police activity” (Headland 75).

Ja! Führer, we will follow you!

Tactics• Coercive violent coaching: men who refused to shoot were jeered at as

cowards and humiliated into murder (Rhodes 220)

• Extensive rationalization: justified killings on a “legal” basis

– Jews labeled as saboteurs, plunderers, terrorists, agitators, brutes, arsonists, spies,

enemies of the state [see Propaganda poster, slide 12]

• Dehumanization:

– Kurt Möbius (police batallion member): “I believed the propaganda that all Jews

were criminals and subhumans and that they were the cause of Germany’s decline

after the First World War. The thought that one should disobey or evade the order

to participate in the extermination of the Jews did not therefore enter my mind at

all” (Rhodes 159).

• Euphemisms: camouflage words cloaked actions

– Included: action, special action, large-scale action, reprisal action, pacification

action, radical action, cleansing action, cleared of Jews, special measures,

handled appropriately, liquidated, rendered harmless, Jewish problem solved,

handled according to orders, ruthless collective measures, executive tasks, severe

measures, elimination, eradication, extermination (Headland 75).

Nazi propaganda

poster

“Get the Jewish-

Bolshevist

warmongers out of

Europe!”

[Russian]

Where Rationalizations Failed• “But the repetition of massacre after

massacre, the screams and pleadings, the faces and bodies glimpsed in their helpless final agonies that unavoidably recalled a sister, a brother, a wife, a child, an aging parent at home or the perpetrator himself, made such rationalizations difficult for some perpetrators to maintain at the edge of the killing pits” (Rhodes 223).

• Bach-Zelewski, SS general, confronted Himmler, military commander, about the mass shootings:

“Look at the men, how deeply shaken they are! Such men are finished for the rest of their lives! What kind of followers are we creating? Either neurotics or brutes!” Einsatzgrüppen in Poland

Psychological Repercussions• Many members of the Einsatzgrüppen underwent:

– Uncontrollable fits of weeping and trembling

– Nervous breakdowns; nervous exhaustion

– Mental derangement (shot wildly and randomly at surroundings)

– Desensitization/Denial• Karl Kretschmer, Obersturmführer, in a letter to wife and children: “Rather it is

a weakness not to be able to stand the sight of dead people; the best way of overcoming it is to do it more often. Then it becomes a habit” (Rhodes 220).

– Sadistic impulses

– Alcoholism

– Some committed suicide

• While these do not mitigate the crime in any way, they demonstrate how deeply the massacres affected the perpetrators– Einsatzgrüppen were, overall, ordinary men who ignored their own

morality and followed orders blindly

– As Milgram/Le Jeu de la Mort experiments show, any person can fall prey to the forces of authority

– It takes power of will and a strong moral compass to disobey superiors.

Bibliography

• "Einsatzgruppen (Mobile Killing Units)." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 6 Jan. 2011. Web. 04 Feb. 2011. <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005130>.

• Bytwerk, Randall. "Nazi Posters: 1933-1945.” German Propaganda Archive. 2001. Web. 04 Feb. 2011. <http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/posters2.htm>.

• "Grymayliv, Ukraine." Broad Daylight. Yahad in Unum, May 2009. Web. 04 Feb. 2011. <http://villagesbyyahad-inunum.weebly.com/grymayliv.html>.

• "Le Jeux De La Mort, Zone Xtreme, Le Pouvoir De La Téléevision, Soumissionà L'autorité." YouTube. 16 Mar. 2010. Web. 04 Feb. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1i8bZrXLqU&feature=related>.

• Rhodes, Richard. Masters of Death: the SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust. New York: A.A. Knopf, 2002.

• Headland, Ronald. Messages of Murder: a Study of the Reports of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the Security Service, 1941-1943. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1992.

• Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

• Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2003